


(you are) the universe in ecstatic motion

by karikes



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Spuhura, aka: my undying love for nyota uhura in less than a thousand words, oh and there's reaallllly vague allusions to, that you can totally ignore if you want
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-09
Updated: 2019-02-09
Packaged: 2019-10-24 20:36:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17711138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/karikes/pseuds/karikes
Summary: Nyota has read about the planets in the far reaches of the galaxy since she was old enough to sound out words.





	(you are) the universe in ecstatic motion

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted [here](https://karikes.tumblr.com/post/163258128785/uhura-7), but I have expanded on it by almost 400 words, so it’s not exactly the same thing anymore. 
> 
> Life is Happening with a capital H right now, and I haven’t really been capable of writing for a bit, but this is one of the few things I posted on tumblr and managed to never move to ao3. It’s small enough that touching it up felt very doable. (My main two wips right now are incredibly long and longer than my usual fare, respectively. Super overwhelming when you’re just trying to remain a functional adult at this particular point in time.) 
> 
> Title is from Rumi.

Nyota has read about the planets in the far reaches of the galaxy since she was old enough to sound out words. Her bookshelves and padds were- and still are- crammed with books on Federation formation and exploration. Her family went to the moon colony multiple times and Risa once before she left for school. It’s not like she’s never met an alien before, and it’s not like she doesn’t have a passing idea of what life off-planet is like.

Still- there is a rush of excitement that floods through her every time she beams down to another world (which doesn’t happen as often as she would like), or she gets to hear a new language- a much rarer occurrence as her time in the black lengthens.

Nyota loves the feeling of her boots on unfamiliar soil, the rush of adrenaline she gets every time the sky is a different color and the words she must translate cannot be fully or even partially understood by the universal translator because they are not on a Federation world. She cannot even begin to explain the overwhelming happiness that floods her entire body when she has the privilege to meet a new species- humanoid or not.

For all the strangeness she witnesses, she has never felt more at home than in the depths of space. It’s only when she sets foot on Earth again, only when she sees more humans than she’s seen in five years; only when she hears familiar and common languages, that she feels as if she does not belong. The four walls of Terran buildings start to close in on her after a few days, the streets of her childhood making her more homesick than happy.

It’s like Nyota has one foot in another world- the one up above her head- and one foot planted in soil. She knows that she should feel more at home among her kind, eating food she grew up with, but she has always yearned for the unknown. Her beginning will always be on Earth, and her life will always be lived in the vastness of the universe. She will spend more days, more years- more everything- on a starship travelling at warp speed, on planets with atmospheres thousands of light years from the place people believe to be her home, among Starfleet members who have also chosen the unknown over the one hundred ninety-six point nine million square miles of home.

She will not regret a moment of it. She will live her life in love with the stars and the peoples among them, and she will blossom under their light.

Her crewmates understand to some extent, she knows, but she rarely talks about it. It’s a knowing that doesn’t need to be shared verbally. It rides in her bones. She knows where she belongs, and if she has to compromise physical proximity to her family members to spend her lifetime among the stars, so be it.

The crew is her family, too. All five hundred and twenty-some members subsist in the same dimension of reality. She knows that she belongs with them, that their card games and shift-changes and planetary delegations- every aspect of their lives- run in sync. There are people she doesn’t like as much, of course. She’s human. But that doesn’t change the fact that they all have left solid ground for the comforting blackness of unexplored space.

Nyota thinks it’s little wonder she falls in love with someone from another planet. It was inevitable, really. It’s not that the unusual is all she’s ever wanted, it’s only that she believes in the power of  _ more. _ If  _ more _ means her fellow soul searching for identity among the stars has a home planet that is not her own: so be it.

The universe is constantly expanding. So is her desire to learn about and understand it.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! I can be found on tumblr [here](https://karikes.tumblr.com/), and I welcome comments and kudos!


End file.
